


the multiverse conspired to help me find you

by pummelwhack



Category: DCU (Comics), Marvel (Comics)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 08:55:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pummelwhack/pseuds/pummelwhack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate Bishop's Interdimensional Journal. Week Nine. What if every super hero we've ever known never existed?</p>
            </blockquote>





	the multiverse conspired to help me find you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [defcontwo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/gifts).



> Title parodied from a Paulo Coelho book.

Batgirl is strong, and Kate realizes just how strong when a blow to her mouth sends Kate reeling with dizzy stupor, and her wrists are pinned to the pavement with her next calculating breath.

Her _next_ calculating breath gets stuck in her throat because Batgirl has a sprinkling of freckles falling across either slope of her nose and it's the prettiest thing Kate's seen since—since that first time on Noh-Varr's spaceship, since sweeping back a stranger's curtains to see the sunlit starry cosmos spanning light years of pitch black void.

That's what this is like: a feather dusting of stars beneath her eyes all wrapped up in black-and-purple spandex, hair like gold—sunny and blinding—framing her jaw and tickling Kate's cheeks.

She struggles on instinct but she can't stop staring, and Batgirl stares back, and there's a moment when her lip curls at one corner in proud amusement and Kate becomes suddenly and achingly aware of the hips straddling her own; they are tight and firm and _right there_. She groans, and it could be the pain, because she hit her head when she fell, but she knows in some secret part of her soul that it's not.

Batgirl's a _babe_.

"Best two out of three?"

Batgirl laughs, loud and attractive. "That's not really how fighting works."

"So... Loser buys the winner pancakes?"

Batgirl blinks. "What?"

It's all the pause Kate needs to buck her hips with enough momentum to roll sideways so their positions reverse. Startled anger flares in Batgirl's eyes for a flash but Kate's strong, too—all flexed muscle and sweet smile as Batgirl quietly embraces defeat.

"Chocolate chip?" she guesses.

"Pecan," Kate answers, inordinately pleased with this outcome, but when a grin splits her face a quick sting couples the movement and she registers a moist feeling that's probably blood.

"Your lip is bleeding," Batgirl notes, somewhat apologetically.

"Your fault."

"I know." And Batgirl need only lift her head a short distance to touch her lips to Kate's and kiss her softly, carefully, but so, so invitingly.

When her skull falls back against the pavement she is smiling with the kind of affection that makes Kate feel white hot in her appendages. Batgirl has no right to be smiling like that, and yet—

Kate thumbs a smear of her own blood from Batgirl's bottom lip, staring at her freckles, wondering if she can find constellations in them.

"You look like outer space," she murmurs, before she can stop herself.

Something lights up in Batgirl's eyes but Kate doesn't have time to classify it because Batgirl's using her newly freed hand to palm Kate's cheek and kiss her once again, gently but with more prominent feeling. Kate sinks into her touch without fear of pain—can't really feel anything but longing for this girl, this caped crusader with a face prettier than celestial skies.

"So... Pancakes?" says Batgirl, looking stupidly happy, when it's over.

"Pecan," Kate agrees, climbing to her feet and giving Batgirl a hand up, as well. Her eyes rake over black-and-purple spandex for an appreciative moment, remembering the way her thighs felt clamped against Kate's waist.

She thinks Gotham might actually turn out to be a bit of fun.

"I dig the purple," she adds as an afterthought, because she's tickled by the thought of what a great team they'd make, here or back home: two costumed vigilantes donned in purple. Batgirl even makes the cape look cool.

"It's eggplant," she says loftily, but grins and loops her arm through Kate's.

  
  


Kate Bishop's Interdimensional Journal. Week Eight.

This makes sixteen in the tally of worlds overtaken by the Brood. We've seen them conquer the Earth, burn it to a crisp, and make themselves kings. (And not often in that order.) Sometimes they stay and force interbreeding. That's always unpleasant. Other times, they put us in chains and put us to work for their empire. Mostly, though, they just eat us.

In this world, generations of interbreeding seem to have resulted in two dominant species: half human/half Brood, and half Brood/half human. And yes, the distinction matters.

The first ones walk like us, talk like us. But they don't _think_ like us. And we find that out when a couple uniforms send the half Brood/half human hellhounds chomping at our heels.

  
  


"If their hands are their feet, are those arms, or legs?"

"As far as crossbreeding genetics go, these guys got the shortest straw!"

"They didn't even get straws; they got the crumpled up paper wrapper the straw comes _in_."

"Less quipping, more running!" David scolds, breathless.

"How can they keep themselves as pets? That's like, if we kept people as pets."

"Loki's kind of like a pet."

"How dare you!"

"You guys—" And then David cries out, because a Brood/human hellhound has its pointy teeth sunk into the flesh of David's ankle.

"I think we've overstayed our welcome," Miss America says, unflappable as ever. She slams a heel into the pavement and sends the hellhounds rolling, turns a corner and opens the multiverse. Teddy goes first, David cradled in his arms, and one by one they leap into whatever disaster of a _what if_ scenario awaits them.

  
  


Kate Bishop's Interdimensional Journal. Week Nine.

What if every super hero we've ever known never existed?

That's the tagline of this week's universe.

We stay because it's the first civilized society we've encountered in I don't even know how long, and David's in no condition to keep playing Russian roulette with the multiverse.

But make no mistake: this is _weird_.

  
  


"I still don't think Gotham is real."

"You're smack in the middle of it, little hawk."

"Little _bat_."

The chuckle that ripples through Batgirl's body vibrates flush against Kate's belly in tangible echoes. When they're close like this, Kate swears she can name the galaxies in Batgirl's freckles. Her eyes are Neptune blue, bottomless and bold, lit up with that affection Kate's still scandalized by.

"Is our world really so different?"

"You have no idea."

Batgirl rolls her hips—just once, pressing Kate into the gravel. This: fooling around on rooftops during moonlit patrols—that's something their worlds have in common. The familiar thrill of ill-timed thirst for skin and lips and friction from both makes Kate feel like she's back home, messing around with Cassie or Tommy or even Eli, if he could relax long enough.

"Does your team ever ask what you do when you're with me?"

Kate's grin is playful, a tongue between her teeth. "What _do_ I do when I'm with you?"

Batgirl palms her breasts for emphasis; Kate arches into the touch, humming her approval.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Your reminders are always appreciated, though."

Batgirl laughs and shuts her up with a kiss.

  
  


Kate Bishop's Interdimensional Journal. Week Ten.

This is the longest we've ever stayed in one universe. David's ankle doesn't make for much of a choice, but still. I've adapted to Oracle's creepy watchful protection. Gotham's skies are, somehow, enduringly dark, and I used to look up at them and wait for a flash of Thor's cape or Captain Marvel's bike. Now I see Superman's cape or Batman's bike. When shit happens, the quinjet never appears. It's like they never existed.

Which is technically true.

Archers don't have a legacy here. Neither do hawks. Here, you're a bat, you're a super, or you're an Amazon. There's no place for us in Gotham, even if Loki keeps insisting Themyscira is America's true home world.

We've got new digs, too, and even those have a certain, homely charm about them. Reminds me of the old lair. Don't be fooled; squatting in a vacant warehouse does not a winning long-term plan make, but we're all sleeping through the night—futzing _finally_ —so no one's complaining. 

  
  


"Don't you ever sleep?"

Batgirl's laughter is soft: a whisper of amusement, too quiet for detection. The others don't know that she's here—not that they don't _know_.

Batgirl leaves hickeys.

But this is just for them—this night, this post battle glow—and neither wants to risk an interruption. Kate's afraid to breathe too loudly, afraid she'll shatter the moment.

See, Kate's never seen Batgirl without her mask before.

"Bats are nocturnal; don't you know?" Batgirl says, lips ghosting the curve of Kate's jaw. She always gets Kate on her back. Kate lets her, because she likes it, but she still thinks it's because of that night. Because loser buys the winner pancakes.

"I don't even know the difference between night and day in this city," Kate quips, fingers idle in Batgirl's hair. She can't stop touching it; she's never gotten to run her fingers all the way through it like this before. It's wild and beautiful and everything she imagined—sunbeams in the darkest places: the scariest corners of Gotham, the blackest stripes of spandex. The deepest parts of space. It's unfit for a creature of night, but it suits her all the same. Kate loves it. Kate loves every secret Batgirl entrusts to her.

Batgirl teases, "That's because you've always got stars in your eyes," and drags her mouth down the column of Kate's throat.

"Only when you're around," Kate agrees, too thirsty for pretense. This isn't like her; she's not always so impatient. But Batgirl's sucking shapes on her neck like she's got all the time in the world and Kate _thrills_ at thoughts of how she plans to use that time, exactly.

But Batgirl stops, and lifts her head to stare at Kate for a long, pulsing moment. Batgirl's never looked at her like this before, like she wants to take off the rest of her costume and ask Kate to stay with her longer than a night.

Kate can barely breathe.

"Stephanie," she says.

"What?"

"My name. It's Stephanie. Steph. I want you to know. I want you to say it, when I do this."

She presses the heel of her hand against the drumming between Kate's legs, hard and with purpose, with promise, and Kate chants her name like a prayer, loving the sound, the _taste_ of it on her tongue.

  
  


Kate Bishop's Interdimensional Journal. Week Eleven.

I am sooo fucked.

  
  


"You could come with me."

Steph smiles, sad and watery, an apology and a confession: _I'm sorry I made this hard for you; you made it hard for me, too_. "I can't leave my mom. My legacy."

Kate's heart gives a painful lurch where it's lodged in the hollow of her throat. This is the softest Kate's ever seen her: in black-and-purple ( _eggplant_ , memory insists) plaid boxer shorts and an over-sized sweater to match. _I dig the purple_ , she says, an echo of their first encounter, after Steph responds to a knock on her window and overcomes the shock of Kate dangling from the arms of a shape shifting alien hybrid with wings.

(Billy might've been less of a jolt—America, too—but Teddy's best at the comforting thing: the knowing what to say and when, and when to say nothing.)

Kate looks at Steph— _really_ looks, and thinks, with great resolve: _this is how I'll remember you_ —the girl behind the legacy, the delicate lines and curves made sharp by her costume, her courage. Steph is tender now: humble and earnest in her presentation and so, so inviting. Kate barrels forward and hugs her, tight as she can and tighter still.

"I wish we—I mean, I'll miss—"

It dies on her tongue. This was always going to happen, wasn't it? They both knew it, and still they let themselves fall. What's left to say? I wish we had more time? Thanks for the memories? How do you let go of someone you could've loved in another life—or in this life, but not in this world?

Steph withdraws just enough to touch their foreheads together, arms strong where they cling to Kate's waist, and Kate thinks—knows— _wishes_ , if they stayed like this, if they still had all the time in the world: she could count them. Each one of her freckles.

She never did get to do that.

"I know," Steph says, in the space between their lips, "I was falling for you, too."

And when they kiss goodbye it's bittersweet: a taste of what could've been, commemoration for what was.

  
  


Kate Bishop's Interdimensional Journal. Week Twelve.

Seventeen worlds conquered by the Brood.

We were better off in futzing Gotham.

But everyone says I'm biased.

I see her in my dreams. Sometimes her freckles are stars and I get to count them. Sometimes she kisses me in places she never kissed before, and I wake up warm even when it's cold. Mostly she just tells me her name, again and again—the girl behind the legacy, the softest curves beneath the black-and-eggplant spandex I admired when we met. I always wake up smiling because that one was real.

It makes sleeping worth the risk.


End file.
